


Him That Takes

by MlleMusketeer



Series: The Quality of Mercy: Supplemental Materials [4]
Category: Transformers: Prime
Genre: Home Invasion, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Slavery, Threats of Infanticide, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Threats of Slavery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-01
Updated: 2014-08-02
Packaged: 2018-02-06 22:57:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1875624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MlleMusketeer/pseuds/MlleMusketeer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Optimus Prime arrives home to find one of Cybertron's worst nightmares in the living room. </p><p>Overlord is tired of waiting and has taken things into his own hands. Not only does he want to prove himself better than Megatron, but also punish Megatron--and anyone associated with him--for ignoring him. </p><p>Optimus is having none of it.</p><p>Rated for Overlord being Overlord.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Tagged like hell because Overlord. Set before 'Justice Be Thy Plea'. You DEFINITELY want to read 'The Quality of Mercy' before reading this.

It was too dark. 

The hab-suite’s windows were darkened. No natural light. Not Megatron’s doing; Megatron who had lived so much of his life in artificial light took what natural light he could get, whenever he could. And he wasn’t due home for hours. 

Optimus paused in the act of reaching for the window controls.

There was a chuckle from the vicinity of the workstation. 

Artificial lights flared on.

“So the rumors are true,” said a voice. Optimus shuttered his optics rapidly to adjust to the light levels. “Megatron and Optimus Prime. How very endearing.”

The silhouette was unmistakable. “Overlord.” Battle protocols roared to life. Overlord in their hab-suite. Overlord smirking. Overlord here and waiting and Megatron and the bitlets due back in less than two hours. Optimus tried to comm his mate. 

Static.

“As you’ve already noticed, I have a jammer in place,” said Overlord. “You know, I was hoping that Megatron would arrive first, but your presence opens such wonderful possibilities.”

Optimus shifted his weight, readying the protocols to bring out his blasters.

Overlord shook a disapproving finger. “Don’t try it,” he said. “Maxie, come here.” 

And as Optimus watched in horror, an Autobot emerged into the room.

He did not know Fortress Maximus well; he was significantly younger, one of the last generations of Well-born mecha. A capable commander despite his youth; Ultra Magnus had always spoken highly of his abilities. Warden of Garrus 9. Missing, presumed offline.

Covered in old energon, wounded. Optics dimmed. Flinching as he approached Overlord but approaching all the same. Hard light collar. 

Optimus’s fists clenched. 

“Like my toy?” said Overlord. “I’ll kill him if you bring out your weapons.”

“What do you want, Overlord?” Optimus forced his voice level, calm.

“Megatron.”

Optimus looked at Fortress Maximus, at the glazed optics, felt the brush of his field, filled with dull terror, terror worn down through exhaustion and habit. 

“And what kind of business would you have with my conjunx endura?”

Overlord stroked a hand over Fortress Maximus’s helm, and the mech didn’t flinch. That in itself was chilling. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“What have you done to Fortress Maximus?”

Fortress Maximus looked at him sidelong, a quick frightened glance, and Overlord’s hand clenched on one of his audial ridges. The mech’s frame tightened in pain. 

“Slave coding makes mecha so much more biddable, doesn’t it?”

The battlemask snapped forward over Optimus’s face. He held onto the tenuous threads of his control as the rage boiled up.

“You have made a grave error in coming here, Overlord,” he said, “and a still graver one in threatening anyone under my protection with _that_. If it is a fight that you are looking for, then fight me—unless you are too frightened to cease hiding behind your hostage.”

“You sound like Megatron.”

“Perhaps I do,” said Optimus. “But I have learned my lessons about the quality of mercy long ago; I am only surprised that you do not know about the fate of the last beings to use slave coding on any Cybertronian.”

Overlord looked confused. Then it vanished behind an arrogant smirk. 

“Your ignorance does not excuse you,” said Optimus. “Stand down. Release Fortress Maximus. Do this, and you will answer for your actions to a jury of your peers.”

“And if I don’t?”

“You will answer to me.”

Overlord laughed. “And you don’t think that you’ll end up like him?” He rose. “Because you will. Maybe you’ll even help me to deal with your mate.”


	2. Chapter 2

“Never.” An involuntary shudder passed through Optimus. 

“You’re frightened,” said Overlord. “has this happened before? Did some other mech take you from him? Or—” he leaned closer, “is that the root of the great peace? Do you carry slave coding? Is that how Lord Megatron won the war, simply by enslaving Optimus Prime?”

Something snapped. Optimus reared up and struck him with all his strength. 

Overlord reeled back, and Optimus pursued him. As he did, he sent the emergency packet on the secret channel he’d prepped the moment he saw Overlord in the hab-suite.

There was one other error Overlord had made. 

It was assuming that the Decepticon Justice Division would not take an interest in the wellbeing of their Lord’s conjunx endura. That channel was a little used frequency, one Overlord had not bothered to block. With good reason. It was good for little more than small information packets, and the Justice Division had taken care to put it about that it was a useless frequency. The fewer people who used it, the DJD felt, the better.

Knee to ventral plating. Elbow to dorsal as Overlord doubled over. Optimus caught at an audial, twisted, used it and its owner’s momentum to guide him hard into the wall. Duck the punch, the clawing hand. 

Overlord straightened up, mouth open, a wheezing, rattling noise tearing from his vocalizer. After a moment, Optimus realized it was a laugh. 

“Is that the best you can do, Prime? All those years of fighting Megatron? If this is what you’re like now, he must be even more pathetic.”

Optimus backhanded him into the wall, went after him while he was still struggling to intake. 

“Rumor has it you bore him sparklings.” Overlord lurched aside, swiping at a holoframe on the serving table by the workstation. “Going by that? What, thirteen of them?” The picture toppled, and Overlord trod on it, deliberately. “You are remarkably fecund. I think I’ll kill them first, make you and Megatron watch.”

A snarl tore from Optimus’s vocalizer, a sound he had never thought himself capable of making. He tackled Overlord, pinned him. The memory of the little blackened frames replayed. The little incomplete one. Never again. 

Overlord squirmed from under him, scrabbling backwards, impression of shocked optics, energon running over his face. Optimus seized him by an ankle, threw him into the seating bench and went after him again. There was no hesitation, no qualm; it was an entirely fair fight and Overlord threatened the unthinkable. 

Overlord would not have his sparklings. Overlord would not have Megatron. 

Overlord picked himself up, field blooming thwarted rage. Out of the corner of his optic, Optimus saw Fortress Maximus let out a little gasping whimper and curl into himself. 

Never again. 

He and Megatron had said it so many times and now to be thwarted again, betrayed by another Cybertronian after all the aliens they had resisted—

Overlord clutched at him, clawed at him, tried to bring him down, but Optimus planted himself well and took that reaching arm and used it to flip Overlord into the serving table. It splintered.

Tailspin. Lightwing. Contrail. Gearshift. Starscream. Megatron. So many more. And now Fortress Maximus, Fortress Maximus living out a secret Pit, forgotten and abandoned by those who should have protected him. 

“You are a traitor,” he said. “Not to the Decepticons but to Cybertron itself.”

Overlord spat a curse, panic in his optics and Optimus dashed him to the ground again. Overlord fought sloppy, too used to his strength. Optimus was used to being weaker, and his precision applied to the new frame meant Overlord was outclassed. 

“It cost us sparks, and billions of years to free ourselves from slave coding, and you use it on a cruel whim. You are a traitor to your species, Overlord, and this I swear by the Matrix entrusted to me: you will answer for it.”

Overlord spat energon, laughed again. Forced. “You think that’s all it takes, Optimus? A couple blows, a declaration of intent? Megatron has spoiled you, has kept you a toothless pet! I would not have been so merciful!”

The blow lifted Optimus from his pedes and from the way Overlord’s optics widened he’d expected to punch directly through his chestplates. 

Optimus rolled with the kick, over the splinters of the serving table, came to his pedes again and caught the next blow in midair. 

Overlord bore down.

Optimus ducked under his guard and jabbed him in the midsection, stepped forward and pulled down on that upraised arm. Overlord went over Optimus’s shoulder and flat on his faceplates again.

This time, he pulled a blaster before getting up. 

 


	3. Chapter 3

The first shot clipped Optimus’s shoulders, sent him staggering. The second caught him in the chest. He slammed back into the wall, gasping. Ablative armor had held, but a red warning flashed in his HUD. 

Overlord grinned. “You should have done your research, librarian. It takes more than that to injure a Phase Sixer. Or has Megatron not told his latest pet about that?”

Optimus stepped forward, a trifle unsteady. “I have done my research,” he said. “But have you?”

Overlord snarled and blasted him. He deflected it with a blade. 

“I was reformatted by the Forge of Solus Prime,” he said. “I am assured that the resulting upgrades have in effect rendered me equivalent to a Phase Sixer. Therefore, Overlord, you should reconsider your course of action. Surrender, and release Fortress Maximus!”

Overlord shot at him again instead. Optimus dodged, hearing something shatter on the sideboard, likely the framed picture from Nurse Darby and Agent Fowler’s bonding ceremony. He dove for Overlord, knocked him flat back into the debris, and sat on him, putting his weight over the Phase Sixer’s pelvis and his hands on his elbows. Not a tenable position, not for long, but he could hear pedes in the entryway.

Just a little longer. Overlord tried to buck him off. Optimus stayed in place, praying it wasn’t Megatron and the sparklings. 

The door burst in in a shower of metal splinters, and Optimus looked up from Overlord’s snarling face into Tarn’s wide optics.

“I require assistance in securing the prisoner,” he said. 

Tarn bobbed his helm. Overlord heaved up under Optimus. “Fortress Maximus—”

Optimus slammed a hand over Overlord’s intake. “Disable his vocalizer. Fortress Maximus has slave coding.”

Overlord clawed at him with his free hand but the rest of the Justice Divison were there, pinning him. Vos unspooled a medical cable to plug in and disable the vocalizer. Optimus, once the Justice Division took over custody of Overlord, heaved himself upright and went to Fortress Maximus where he knelt in the corner, optics squeezed shut. 

He knelt in front of the other Autobot, keeping his field as unthreatening as he could manage. “Fortress Maximus,” he said, and paused as Overlord produced a garbled shriek of static.

“He’s secured,” said Tarn. “Any further requests?”

If Overlord hadn’t threatened his sparklings, Optimus would have had the luxury of closely supervising Tarn. If Optimus hadn’t been looking at Fortress Maximus, at the deep gashes in his armor and the tears in his treads, or the frozen fear on his faceplate, if he hadn’t been sitting well within the other mech’s field, rancid exhausted terror and pain and anger, he would likely have put more thought into his next words. But he was, and so he didn’t.

“He is in your custody,” he said. “Get him out of here. Ensure that he is no longer a threat.”

Overlord looked back at him, optics wide, pleading. Optimus carefully didn’t react, turned his attention again to Fortress Maximus. 

“Help is on its way,” he said softly, sending another ping to Tarn. _Get Ratchet here now_. “Overlord is gone. He will not be returning.”

Fortress Maximus looked up at him, silent. Then his optics went past Optimus to something behind him, terror again, and Optimus whirled, thinking Overlord had escaped.

Megatron stood in the doorframe, looking at the wreck that had been their seating area, the Justice Division bent over Overlord’s prone frame, the smashed holoframes, Optimus and Fortress Maximus. With a sinking sensation in his tank, Optimus counted thirteen pairs of red and blue optics looking, too. 


End file.
